“Hello me ... It's me again
You can subdue, but never tame me” – “Sweating Bullets” -Megadeth
I chose the above quote for the following reasons:
(A) This is my first real blog post in like 8 months.
(B) I thought I’d imitate my blogging idol Murph13. (http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=Murph13&tab=weblogs&uid=439780456) Go, there,.it will change your life.)(C. I once bagged Dave Mustaine’s groceries.
So, I’d been waiting to write about my experiences over the last week or two for awhile now, but you’ll forgive me since I'm currently homeless and my flashy blinged-out desktop PC is collecting dust in a suitcase.
My internet access is basically limited to when I hang out at the girls’ place AKA “Fantasy Camp.” Here there are laptops than a hipster-friendly coffee shop. I type now from Laptop Station #3.
Speaking of hipsters, I sorta feel like I’m stuck in some kind of hazy Bohemian SoCal summer trip, with less pot and more paperwork involved.
Which brings us to my brilliant idea: Since I’ve been drowning in paperwork for the purposes of prostituting myself for local employers AKA resumes and job applications, I will try to sum my recent experiences in handy-dandy bullet point form.
Last week:
-My last few days in Columbia were incredible, despite my spartan lifestyle. (All my stuff was packed up into a truck a week before I left. All I had left was a mattress, my favorite plush blanket, an alarm clock, lamp, and my Wheel of Time book.)
Minus my usual electronic accoutrements, I was forced to spend most of my time hanging out with old friends or in quiet reflection. There’s really something to be said about being forced to fast from distractions.
Plus, with my impending departure hanging over the proceedings, much of the conversations with my friends were stripped of the normal chit-chat and focused on important things. I wish I could of left Columbia like Frodo leaving Rivendell for drama’s sake, but then again, I did make a six-minute mockumentary about myself to show to 200 people at The Rock before I left. I can’t complain.
-Back in Springfield, things were as they usually are…boring. Except when I’m getting punched in the nether-regions by my rambunctious nephew Aidin. The last two days I was in town, my friends Jon and Jeff and I did the typical late-night Springfield circuit…or at least tried to. Barnes and Noble was closed early, so we went to Wal-Mart little brother Meijers and bought 70-cent DVD’s. Nuff said.
-One notable Springfield experience was Friday when I visited my high school for the first time in almost 11 years and spoke to the same Newspaper class that I took myself way back in the fall of 1994. I was introduced as the “guy that wrote the Rachel story” (I won an award that year for writing a feature about a ghost that supposedly haunted the high school…the school was built on a graveyard way back when). Surprisingly, everyone knew who I was from that intro.
The kids also seemed fairly interested in my rambling 30 minute speech about my career and introduction into the world of journalism…then again I tried to stick to the exciting parts.
(Getting threatened by an NFL player, hanging out with Miss USA, flying a small plane, covering grisly murders, investigating the church arsonist…. all the fun stuff.)
Strangely, the class was made up of about 80 percent girls…In my day, perhaps when the high school glass ceiling was still in effect, we were a bunch of Old Boys.
-I also had a regrettable foray into nostalgia gone wrong at Chuck E. Cheese with Aiden on Saturday afternoon. It was ridiculously crowded, full of fat kids with pizza-stained Spider-Man T-shirts pushing each other to stuff fistfuls of tokens into Skee-Ball machines to get enough tickets to buy Pokemon posters. My memories of Chuck E. Cheese have now been tainted forever.
Chuck E. Cheese....Innocence Lost.
-It should be noted that I left Springfield wearing my trusty hoody and a leather jacket over a T-shirt and button-up since it was like 15 degrees. Arriving to Los Angeles 5 hours later, it was 80-plus degrees and sunny. I suddenly forgot why people lived in the Midwest.
Yup, It's February in SoCal.
MORE TO COME ON THE LA EXPERIENCE!
